


Half His Soul

by skywalkersamidala



Category: I Medici | Medici: Masters of Florence (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Everything Hurts and I'm Dying, M/M, literally just francesco's last scene from his POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 04:05:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17800745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skywalkersamidala/pseuds/skywalkersamidala
Summary: “I have nothing to confess,” Francesco said after a heavy pause, too proud to express remorse yet too ashamed to deny guilt. It was a hollow attempt to satisfy both the warring halves of his soul. The one half that was screaming for Lorenzo’s blood, and the other that had only ever wanted his love.





	Half His Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sol_Invictus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sol_Invictus/gifts).



> Listen I refuse to believe that Francesco died as a 100% unrepentant asshole, and Matteo Martari's fabulous acting in this scene did genuinely give me the impression that he was feeling SOME degree of regret so. this fic happened. Dialogue obviously all taken directly from the episode

Everything was making him ache. The rope tying his wrists together and chafing against his skin. The hard stone floor pressing against his knees. The bruises left from the angry mob that had chased him down.

Lorenzo’s eyes boring into him with such intensity that he could feel it even as he kept his own gaze resolutely straight ahead.

“You may confess before I pass sentence.”

Francesco forced himself to raise his eyes to Lorenzo. “So we get no trial?” _I thought you believed in a just republic,_ he wanted to say mockingly.

But the man who looked coldly back at him was not the idealist Francesco had once known. Those blue eyes no longer shone with the light of hope for a better future for Florence. They were empty, unfeeling.

Francesco had done that. Francesco had stolen that light.

Without missing a beat, Lorenzo said, “Did my brother?” But it was not an angry retort. His tone was flat; he just sounded tired. As if nothing mattered to him anymore.

Francesco lowered his gaze again, something almost, almost like remorse burning in his stomach.

“Nothing I’ve done is a crime!” Salviati insisted.

Lorenzo did not respond, fiddling with the dagger in his hands. Francesco wondered if he intended to use it on them. He thought he might welcome it, if he did.

He knew Lorenzo was waiting for him to speak. To confess to his sins. But what was there to confess? Lorenzo knew what he had done. And so did God, though that judge seemed to matter less than the one currently standing right in front of him.

Part of him wanted to spit in Lorenzo’s face, say that he would kill Giuliano again if given the choice and his only regret was that he had not killed Lorenzo too. Yet there was also another part of him. The part he had struggled to silence for so long but was now crying out to make itself heard. The part that had not wanted to let go of Lorenzo as they embraced outside the church, that had wanted to whisper to him to go home and be safe. The part that had hesitated, even with the sword already in his hand, when Lorenzo was scrambling to get away from him, saying his name over and over again breathlessly, pleadingly.

_Francesco…Francesco…Francesco…_

That part of him, now, wanted to clasp Lorenzo’s knees in supplication, to beg forgiveness, to apologize for causing him pain. For stealing that beautiful light from his eyes.

“I have nothing to confess,” Francesco said after a heavy pause, too proud to express remorse yet too ashamed to deny guilt. It was a hollow attempt to satisfy both the warring halves of his soul. The one half that was screaming for Lorenzo’s blood, and the other that had only ever wanted his love.

The others were talking again but Francesco barely heard, too busy with the struggle going on inside himself to care much about the one happening around him.

“I confess to being a professional soldier. I carried out the duties I was paid to perform.”

“Yes, my wife suspected you. Carlo tried to warn us. My brother even heard rumors of an army.”

“They’ll be here any moment,” Francesco said. Did he mean it as a taunt or as a warning? Even he didn’t know.

“Will they?” Lorenzo said calmly, derisively. He knew he had already won, incoming army or not.

There was another silence. Francesco tried to summon his anger back, because it was so much easier to bear than his regret. But it wouldn’t come. Now that he’d been caught, now that it was over, his anger was hiding. A coward, like him.

“I should have done more,” Lorenzo said finally, the sorrow in his voice cutting Francesco to the core. “I should have done more, but…” Again he looked down at the dagger in his hands. “How could I have predicted this?”

“You have no right to judge us,” Salviati said. Vengeful still, as Francesco should have been, and yet he just sighed quietly and stared at the floor, wishing everything would be over. “The Medici have killed countless times. Your father made an orphan of me with the stroke of his quill!”

In a swift, violent motion, Lorenzo stabbed his dagger into the surface of the desk behind him, where it stood upright, quivering slightly. Francesco gazed at it, taking in the blood soaking the blade. This wasn’t who Lorenzo was. He was a poet, a dreamer, a peacemaker. Not a warrior.

Francesco thought back to how shattered he had been the day they’d arrived in Volterra and seen the massacre that had taken place. That day, Francesco had comforted him—awkwardly, still unused to the strange new alliance between them, but sincerely. Even in those early days he had hated to see that look on Lorenzo’s face, the look of someone who had been forced to realize that the world was a cruel place. The look of lost innocence.

Today he had that look again. But today it was Francesco’s fault.

“We were friends, Francesco,” Lorenzo said next. Francesco stared determinedly at the dagger, fighting back the lump that was forming in his throat. “There were times that Giuliano was jealous of you.”

Francesco swallowed thickly. _I’m your family too,_ Lorenzo had told him once. A long time ago, when he still had Lorenzo and Novella and Guglielmo, when the family he’d always been taught to hate had considered him one of their own. The last time Francesco had been truly happy. Before Jacopo had made him see that Lorenzo was playing him for a fool. Before Jacopo had replaced his happiness with an all-consuming anger and thirst for vengeance.

Jacopo had said, the day he took Francesco and Guglielmo away, that there would never be peace between the Medici and the Pazzi. And indeed there wasn’t. But for a moment, just for a moment, Francesco had truly believed there could be.

He’d been naïve then. Stupid.

“You are a Medici. I am a Pazzi,” he said tonelessly, dutifully echoing the words Jacopo had drilled into his head since childhood. Why did they sound so hollow now? Why had Francesco let something as silly as a name come between him and the other half of his soul?

Because that’s what Lorenzo was, he realized with aching clarity. That’s what was fighting inside him right now. The half of his soul that belonged to Jacopo and the half that belonged to Lorenzo. Francesco had never been his own man, really; he had always been torn between the two of them. Between the Pazzi and the Medici. Between blood and love.

And in the end, he’d chosen wrong.

At last he looked at Lorenzo, meeting his eyes steady on. It was too late. Francesco could not re-make that choice. He could not apologize. He could not bring Giuliano back. He could not restore the light and innocence to Lorenzo’s eyes.

Lorenzo would have to put him to death as a traitor, it was inevitable. And the only thing Francesco could possibly do now was to make it easier for him. To make it so that he would not have to feel guilty. So that the half of Lorenzo’s soul which had belonged to Francesco, which Francesco had failed to keep safe, would not shatter into any more pieces than it already had.

And so he said, as calmly and coolly as he could manage, “We could never be truly friends.” _Hate me,_ he prayed silently. _Please hate me, so that it will not hurt you to kill me._

Lorenzo stared at him for a long moment before dropping his gaze, nodding slightly and rubbing his hand over his face. Looking so tired, so defeated, so resigned. “Hang these two so the whole city can see them,” he said.

Francesco barely reacted, too numb to feel anything. There was more talking. Salviati was protesting. Lorenzo was saying something in reply. Someone mentioned Jacopo. Francesco couldn’t hear any of it, continuing to stare unseeingly ahead of him.

It was Sandro Botticelli’s voice that cut through his daze. “Lorenzo, please do not do anything you will later regret.”

_Later._ There would be a _later_ for Lorenzo. Not for Francesco. It finally began to sink in that this was really the end. The last moments of his life.

The last time he would ever see Lorenzo, because he surely would achieve heaven, whereas Francesco was going straight to hell.

So he slowly turned his head to look at him, and after a second Lorenzo turned towards him too. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, their eyes saying everything and nothing. Francesco was not trying to silently plead with him to change his mind and spare his life. He was only drinking in the sight of him, doing his best to memorize every last detail of his face before he went to his death.

“Hang them,” Lorenzo repeated, a note of finality in his voice.

And Francesco realized that this cold, broken Lorenzo was not the one he wanted to remember, so his eyes flickered away again and slowly closed as the guard behind him grabbed him to take him away. Behind the darkness of his eyelids he saw Guglielmo smiling, Novella laughing. In the deafening silence of the room he heard Lorenzo calling him friend, calling him brother. Two terms that meant so much but also not enough.

He was back at little Piero’s christening, telling Lorenzo what an honor it was to be his godfather. Words that failed to convey how he felt that his heart would burst from the happiness that came from feeling like, for the first time, he had a family and a place to belong. Lorenzo smiling, as if he understood what Francesco couldn’t say, and clasping his shoulder in a gesture of the casual affection that had been so common between them, once.

He did not fear death, Francesco realized as he stood in front of the window. Because the best part of him had died long ago.

And as he was falling, as the rope was tightening around his neck, he welcomed the onrushing darkness.


End file.
